Cloud communications provider Twilio has released the TaskRouter API, enabling developers to create intelligent routing systems for contact centers.
Twilio offers a cloud communications platform that takes a number of connectivity pieces around voice and messaging--typically from a communications infrastructure and connectivity that customers get from carriers--and makes it available as cloud option. But unlike other cloud options, Twilio is an API and is available to Web and mobile developers.
Twilio's TaskRouter eliminates the need to a have separate contact center infrastructure to handle incoming requests from customers--whether it's from phone calls, text messages, Internet chats, or social media requests--instead passing the incoming requests to the best agent.
"Increasingly, [what] we've seen is that people are really focused on making sure not just that a task gets to a worker but that the task gets to the right worker at the right time," says Manav Khurana, vice president of product marketing at Twilio. "What skills are required to address the task?"
Khurana explains that intelligent routing was only previously available if it was packaged as part of a much larger, very expensive stand-alone system. "By making this routing available as a cloud API, the routing can be embedded into business applications that customers already have."
While smaller contact centers have an option to use TaskRouter for very simple tasks, larger companies need a scalable best routing system.
"You have a huge number of tasks and workers, and are really focused on delivering the right customer experience by getting the right task to the right worker," says Al Cook, director of product marketing at Twilio. "That becomes a really hard thing to build yourself. It's not really something you can get from a shrink-wrapped, prepackaged call center offering."
It's also an expensive proposition to let customers choose the form of communication method they want to contact customer service, and provide the right level of information to agents so that they can appropriately handle customer requests. To create systems that can handle such requirements, a good amount of customization from the enterprise is necessary, whether it's done in-house or contracted out. However, Cook says that TaskRouter makes those tasks much simpler and doesn't require a huge upfront investment.
That's good news considering that Twilio has seen that smaller companies are often forced to choose between investing money into a routing system to provide a better customer experience or forego the expenditure and possibly provide less-than-optimal customer service.
"Today you find that companies have to choose between, 'Do I want to increase my customer experience by getting tasks to the right agent, or do I want to increase my agent efficiency but lower the customer experience?'" Cook says. "When you employ this type of intelligent routing, you can improve your customer experience and increase agent efficiency at the same time."
Khurana echoes that thought. "Twilio from the beginning has been focused on making communications available to developers and businesses in a fashion that they can compose how communications should be built as a part of business applications rather than as a stand-alone infrastructure. The solution is about enabling businesses to build exactly what they need and change that as their needs change to provide a better end-user experience."